Segregationists used the Tenth Amendment during the civil rights movement to justify their racist beliefs. The Tenth Amendment has been very good for conservatives and has been used successfully during the 20th century in court cases to prove that the federal government cannot:

Most of what has been written about the Tenth Amendment in the 21st century refers to its potential to destroy such progressive policies as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act. As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2011, “The Second Amendment was a constitutional landmine for the left; the Tenth is a nuclear bomb.” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is a big fan of the Tenth Amendment. “States’ rights” is not usually a battle cry that is popular with progressives.

To find a progressive use of the Tenth Amendment, we had to go back to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which, Mike Maharrey writes, “was meant to protect the ‘property’ of slave holders, but many free blacks found themselves accused of escaping slavery and faced the prospect of living out their life on a plantation.” Northern abolitionists resisted the Fugitive Slave Act and Northern states used the Tenth Amendment to nullify it. According to Maharrey, “Nearly every northern state passed some type of personal liberty law. Provisions varied from state to state, but included denying slave catchers the use of state facilities such as jails, guaranteeing jury trials for accused fugitives, and imposing punitive actions on state or local officials aiding in fugitive slave rendition.”

The Tenth Amendment Center proclaims on its website, “When states and local communities take the lead on policy, the people are that much closer to the policymakers, and policymakers are that much more accountable to the people. Few Americans have spoken with their president; many have spoken with their mayor.” When the people believe the federal government is overstepping its boundaries, the Tenth Amendment gives the power to the people. It provides a way for people who have never spoken with their president, and probably never will, to say to him or her, “Hey, wait a minute. This doesn’t seem right to me. I think I should have more to say about this.”

Now let’s talk about sanctuary cities.

Less than a week after his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that denies federal funds to sanctuary cities. The order states, “Interior enforcement of our Nation’s immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States,” and “Sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States willfully violate Federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States.” But here is how Ted Wheeler, the mayor of the sanctuary city of Portland, Oregon, explains what being a sanctuary city means: “”We are not harboring criminals. If somebody commits a crime … they’ll still be prosecuted here for those crimes … The sanctuary status simply means that if you’re being held in one of our local facilities and … all of the charges are dropped, we’re not going to expend local resources simply for the purpose of enforcing federal immigration status. If the federal government wants to expend those resources, they still can.” Are you picking up on the “states’ rights” vibe yet?

This toolkit describes how community members can plan and implemented successful ordinance efforts and provides links to documents and tools others have used. We invite you to use these steps and documents and adapt them to your needs.